New lesson: sexual harassment training for city educators

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza is photographed Wednesday, August 29, 2018 in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams for New York Daily News) (Barry Williams for New York Dail / for New York Daily News)

Class is in session for city educators, with new lessons on how to prevent sexual harassment.

City schools Chancellor Richard Carranza – whose own actions were at the center of a $75,000 sex discrimination settlement in his former district of San Francisco – sent an email to public school staffers Tuesday informing them of mandatory anti-sex harassment training.

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The lessons are to be carried out as part of the Stop Sexual Harassment in NYC Act, which Mayor de Blasio signed into law in May amid an explosive scandal over the city’s handling of the issue.

“Each of us plays an essential role in maintaining a respectful work environment that is free of sexual harassment for all employees,” according to Carranza’s letter to city educators informing them of the training.

“The Sexual Harassment Prevention Training was designed to help identify and define sexual harassment and understand how best to prevent it,” the letter continues.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is pictured at a City Hall press conference on education funding on April 25th. (Jefferson Siegel / New York Daily News)

As part of the City Council’s package of bills aimed at addressing and preventing sexual harassment in the workplace, signed by de Blasio, all city employees must take Sexual Harassment Prevention Training on an annual basis.

For city school workers, this entails a 45-minute online training session that must be completed by Oct. 23, plus school-based, in-person workshops. Staffers in other agencies will take the same lesson.

The city schools’ handling of sex harassment issues heated up in recent months, with conflicting statistics and official secrecy drawing extra criticism.

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Figures published by the de Blasio administration in April identified 471 cases of sex harassment complaints in city schools from 2013 to 2017.

But internal records kept by Education Department officials showed 590 complaints during the same period — a figure about 25% higher than the number reported by de Blasio.

Just a handful of those cases were substantiated, prompting de Blasio to say "a hypercomplaint dynamic" drove a high number of reports of such incidents – a statement he quickly walked back.

The situation prompted the city to put an additional $5 million to hire extra investigators to probe such reports in June - but not all the investigators have yet been hired.

A City Hall spokeswoman said the training had been rolled out to all employees citywide and that the entire workforce is set to be trained by the end of the calendar year. The city will spend about $500,000 over fiscal years 2018 and 2019 on the training across all agencies.

Ben Chapman

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Ben Chapman is an award-winning reporter who covers education for the New York Daily News. A graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism whose work has also been published in the Washington Post and the New York Times, Chapman has written more than 2,000 articles about New York City schools for the Daily News since joining the paper in 2009. In 2015 Chapman was awarded a first-place citation for his education coverage in the New York State Associated Press Association contest. He was recognized by the New York State Associated Press Association again in 2016 with an award for in-depth reporting. Chapman is also a regular speaker in public forums and makes frequent appearances on television and radio.